Authority is not given to you to deny The Return Of The King, tempting as it might be.
The Rankin/Bass Return of the King (1980) is like picking up the final chapter of a book you barely remember starting, only to realise someone else might have just summarised most of it for you up to this point. If their Hobbit was a quirky, folky journey through Middle-earth, The Return of the King feels like that same world viewed through the bottom of a pint glass, swirling together bits and pieces in a kaleidoscope of fantasy-lite kitsch. Somehow, it’s the end of the story, even if you were never shown the beginning—or the middle.
Produced under bizarrely fractured rights, the Rankin/Bass team had secured permission only to adapt The Hobbit and The Return of the King, leaving the massive gap of The Lord of the Rings conspicuously out of their grasp. Rather than let a little thing like continuity trouble them, they leap straight to the final act, expecting audiences to connect dots as large as Shelob—who, by the way, is entirely missing from this version. What remains is a sort of musical highlight reel: a series of big set-pieces and broad plot strokes condensed into 98 minutes, with every looming threat softened by a catchy tune.
Visually, this Return of the King carries over the whimsical, slightly off-kilter animation style of The Hobbit, trading that film’s pastel dreamscape for something darker and moodier. Gollum returns in his bafflingly amphibious form, resembling more of a frog prince than a corrupted hobbit, while the Nazgûl appear to have taken style tips from Smaug, sporting a bizarre blend of catfish and phantom in their designs. There’s menace here, but it’s the kind of menace you might expect on the cover of a ’70s folk-rock album dabbling in fantasy themes.
The story itself is streamlined and simplified, with subplots swept aside in favour of sheer narrative momentum. Sam’s bravery is intact, and Frodo’s ordeal with the Ring comes through, but there’s little sense of the rich texture or political tension Tolkien wove into his narrative. Gondor’s defence is reduced to a backdrop for more crowd-pleasing, if bizarre, musical numbers. Shelob’s pivotal confrontation is excised entirely, likely deemed too much of a tonal shift for a film already juggling fantasy with musical theatre.
Packed with original tunes, Return of the King features cult classics like “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way,” which audaciously has orcs singing about their distaste for military discipline. You can almost hear Tolkien sighing from beyond the grave. These songs, while undeniably catchy, create an atmosphere that veers wildly from sombre to silly, never quite settling on the kind of heroism that defines Tolkien’s finale.
What’s most curious is that, while this film is meant to conclude the story Rankin/Bass began with The Hobbit, it barely feels connected to its predecessor. Gone is much of that film’s simple, homespun charm. Where The Hobbit felt like a campfire tale, this feels more like a fever dream after one too many marshmallows. Bilbo, now an old hobbit in Rivendell, appears as a loose connection, but the film doesn’t seem particularly interested in the journey that brought us here. Instead, it fixates on the finish line, racing through crucial scenes with all the gravity of a bedtime story someone’s desperate to wrap up before falling asleep.
And yet, despite its fractured, folksy approach, there’s something oddly compelling about The Return of the King. It’s not a faithful adaptation, nor is it likely to satisfy anyone expecting Tolkien’s grandeur. But for those who grew up with it, its mismatched appeal is hard to deny. It’s a memory of Middle-earth that’s colourful, kitschy, and deeply nostalgic—if not entirely coherent. Rankin/Bass’s The Return of the King may miss the mark as an epic, but as a quirky chapter in the long, strange history of Tolkien adaptations, it’s undeniably earned its place.
